![oda 595 members oda 595 members](https://d10ukrc8bht4o0.cloudfront.net/images/iva-content/content/hdphotos/11642/011642/011642_1280x720_503884_033.jpg)
"People take on larger than life quality when things like this happen," she said. It later emerged that Chapman had also been working for the CIA and was honored on the CIA's memorial wall.īut to Lynn, her son is far more than a celebrated example of American sacrifice and heroism. Nathan was highly decorated, with honors including the Bronze Star with "V" device, denoting "Valor" for his heroism in combat, and a posthumous Purple Heart. He also served in Haiti in 1995 before spending three years in Okinawa, Japan. As a "very, very social guy," she said, he developed a close bond with his small unit in which it was crucial to have each other's backs. "The fact that he was in Special Forces was a natural fit for him," Lynn said. In September 1991, he volunteered for Special Forces training. By 1989 he participated in his first combat mission, in Panama, and he would go on to deploy in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm. Nathan Chapman took to the Army right away. Everything he wanted to do was important and meaningful." He was more than a symbol There were times when I thought - and even said to him - that he would never amount to anything. "The thing that I would say instead was that - there were times when I thought of Nathan as less than me. "But I wasn't able to come up with what was really important. "There was an opportunity at his funeral to provide words to be spoken," Keith told her. Lynn asked her son what he would have told his brother, if given the chance. The past two decades have given Keith time to think about what he wishes he had said to Nathan. "And I think that that's probably, if not slowed down my improved understanding, it's maybe accelerated my loss of understanding." "I haven't had the last 20 years of time when an adult might share time with his brother." "All these memories now are 40-plus years old and they're all very thin in my mind," Keith said. "I think, if anything, I withdrew from him." "He didn't withdraw from me," Keith said. Keith was studious and didn't easily make friends. Keith said that growing up with his brother, "I felt like he was too different from me to really understand what was really good about him." service members were among the nearly 200 people killed in an attack outside the Kabul airport. Since then, America's longest foreign war has claimed the lives of nearly 2,500 service members in the 20-year U.S. Johnny "Mike" Spann, a 32-year-old CIA paramilitary officer from Alabama, was killed in late November 2001 during a revolt of Taliban prisoners in northern Afghanistan. He was the first American soldier to be killed by enemy fire in the war in Afghanistan.Ĭhapman's death was just over a month after the first American death in combat in the war. Nathan was killed in action near the town of Khost on Jan. That's when it became clear to Keith: The fallen soldier was his own brother. "It was my birthday and I said, 'Oh, you burned the cake.' She says, 'No - your father called.' " "My wife greets me at the door and says, 'I have bad news,' " he said. He thought, "Well, yes, Nathan is there, but he's one of who knows how many? So, I put it out of my mind." The brothers, just 2 1/2 years apart in age, had always had a complicated dynamic that was born from their two very different personalities.Ī couple weeks after that phone call, Keith heard on his car radio that an American soldier had been killed in Afghanistan. "I don't remember that we said very much," Keith said during a Stor圜orps interview in Frederick, Md., last week with their mother, Lynn Chapman. Army's 1st Special Forces Group, couldn't disclose his location, his family put it together based on what time Nathan said it was where he was calling from. Nathan had called up his family from Afghanistan.Īlthough the 31-year-old, a sergeant first class with the U.S. The last conversation Keith Chapman had with his younger brother Nathan Chapman was on Christmas Day 2001. Keith and Lynn Chapman at their Stor圜orps recording in Frederick, Md., on Aug.